Rant: Ugly Americans

Today at work we had a surprise birthday party for our foreman. He's a good guy. And we were clustering a bit, talking about nothing in particular, but someone brought up how I went to Europe over the summer. One of them asked if I had enjoyed my time in France.

"Yeah, it was great! I loved France."
Then from afar: "I hate the French..."

Now this guy, I hadn't even been talking to him so it was rude for him to even poke into our conversation. Aside from the fact that, after hearing I loved France, his comment couldn't have been anything more than something to stir shit up. So I asked him if he had ever been to France, or if he knew any Frenchmen. He didn't. I asked why he hated the French, then. He told me, "It's my right. Besides, you know how they are." What a great non-answer. Misinformed, uncultured, senseless sheep. Following the flock, having no clue as to why they hate, just hating for the sake of it.

And that's not all...I was reading through my e-mail and some low-brow idiot sent me this joke:
(paraphrasing)
Q:What do you get when the U.S. puts a fence around its southern border? A: Spic and Span.

Firstly, it didn't even make sense, and I was too disgusted and offended to even look at who sent it. I deleted it before I wrote some kind of distateful hatemail back at them. Why is that funny? What kind of childish, ignorant fools are among us that they must take someone different than they are, just to berate them? Does it make them feel better? Stronger? Does it feed the emptiness that their insecurites bleed from them?

So basically, here it is: Go ahead, we have the right to hate anyone we want. Hating a group of people, or a nationality, or a race, or a gender, for no decent reason--and hating a whole group of anyone, there's never a decent reason for that--if you're ignorant enough to play into that naive and primitive mindset, then just remember that you are the Ugly American, you are the reason America is despised and feared, and when some liberal news program shows nationals from somewhere "over there" burning American flags and torching embassies...it's your fault, and you deserve it. And why not? You hate them, they may as well give you a reason.